BKON: The Physical Web For Retail

BKON: The Physical Web for Retail

We recently sat down with BKON to discuss their powerful administration tool Phy.net ( a cloud based platform ) and to pick their brain on how the Physical Web and their beacon device could help revolutionize the retail industry.

Volanti: How can the BKON help digital signage displays and the retail industry?

BKON: The purpose of signage is to catch the attention of consumers and to convey information. Beacons extend the range of signage, expand the content that can be conveyed, make the content instantly savable and shareable, and open the door to direct consumer interaction, including a purchase transaction.

Volanti: While iBeacon has been around for a few years, it has yet to gain widespread adoption. How will the addition of Google’s Eddystone shape the future of beacon interactions?

BKON: iBeacon based apps costs tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars to deploy, and each contextual app is a closed domain, making the technology more difficult to scale, since one has to start anew with each new app. Alternately, Eddystone-URL democratizes these proximity markets. Content costs only tens of dollars to deploy, and the user interface is universal. When consumers can have a common UI (their browser) for all interactions, and when retailers can focus solely on content, without worrying about an app, it creates environment for proximity marketing poised to scale rapidly.

Volanti: How has the BKON team simplified the process for setting up and managing beacons?

BKON: We have taken the requirement to interact with the beacon out of the process, and shifted all administration to a cloud based platform: PHY.net. Now, setup is no more complex than recording a beacon’s ID and mailing it to its placement location. From then forward, the beacon’s content can be managed from the cloud.

Volanti: What are some of the current challenges with beacon tech? Where do you see the future of beacon technology going?

BKON: We believe that the Physical Web is the future of beacon technology, where consumers have one common interface for interacting with any place or thing. The biggest near term challenge it educating consumers about the Physical Web and about this common method of interacting with it.

Volanti: Any upcoming new features for PHY.net that you can share with us?